


Shots Fired

by Streetfirre



Category: Friday Night Funkin' (Video Game), Pico's School (Video Game)
Genre: Because I don't like leaving them unnamed, Calling the Boyfriend Keith, Calling the Girlfriend Cherry, F/M, I'm making Keith and Cherry 19 and Pico 20 (I know that's not their confirmed ages), Lots of Cursing, M/M, Multi, Not really sure what kind of warnings I need yet so that may change, Someone tell me in comments if they ever get an official name and I'll change it here, This is based on the joke that Keith and Pico are ex'es
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:26:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29187018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Streetfirre/pseuds/Streetfirre
Summary: While the money certainly was helpful, did he really need it so badly that he was willing to deal with a demon for it? I mean, who asks a guy to go beat some kid in a rap battle or resort to shooting the kid if they can't win the rap battle? Regardless, the amount of money offered was nothing to sneeze at, so Pico supposes he might as well hear the guy out and see how it goes.
Relationships: Boyfriend/Girlfriend (Friday Night Funkin'), Boyfriend/Pico (Friday Night Funkin')
Comments: 14
Kudos: 146





	1. Re-loading

**Pico’s POV**

Pico grumbled under his breath as he looked at his phone. It was getting awful close to when he was supposed to meet “Daddy Dearest” to discuss what exactly he was needed for. The dude was offering serious money for him to fight some other kid in a rap battle or just shoot the kid. He wasn’t really happy about being considered to murder some random guy, but that money wasn’t something to be ignored. Hopefully he could just beat the kid in the rap battle and could move on with his life and not resort to having to pull the trigger. Contrary to popular belief, he didn’t enjoy needless killing. That didn’t mean he didn’t have the balls to kill or wasn’t above threatening someone, but he still had somewhat of a conscience. He took a deep breath and decided to wait.

The damn dude was 10 minutes late to the meeting he called Pico in for. Seriously, who calls a meeting and can’t even arrive at the time they chose? Just as he was about to get fed up at having his time wasted, a limo pulled up. Go figure whatever sleazebag was in there would arrive in a limo of all things, flaunting his money around. A tall man stepped out and Pico gripped the handle of his holstered gun a bit tighter. The dude radiated bad energy to the point he was getting less and less sure about if he should really be doing this. Once the man was completely out of the limo, he grinned.

“Well well, what a lovely evening,” the man began as he never dropped the venomous grin he had, “I apologize for the delay, the missus wanted me to take care of something for her.” The man snapped his fingers and one of his grunts came out carrying a case. “I suppose you’d like to see the money, yes? This is just to show you that I mean business of course. I wouldn’t stiff you if you keep your end after all.” The minion opened it up and showed off the cash. “Today is also, of course, to humor your questions and to show you your target.” 

“Yeah,” Pico grumbled, “my first being who the hell pissed off some rich man anyways?” 

“I somewhat figured you’d ask that. Very well. You see, I have a darling little daughter, and she’s recently fallen for a… well, let’s just say he’s not good enough for my precious little girl. We’re a family of singers you know, and he’s just some scrub of a kid after my daughter’s talent. I mostly want you to show him up and chase him off. After all, me and the kid got a deal. If he can’t beat me and whoever I send after him each week, he can’t stay with my daughter, see?”

“Right… I’m assuming the killing is a last resort?”

“Or first, that’s your choice to be frank. Just don’t tell my daughter I sent you if you go about deciding to kill him. That would break her poor little heart.” The man motioned for the grunt to approach Pico. “If you win or kill him, you get the full amount. If you fail to chase him off or end him, you only get a quarter for at least trying. Now, know I will know if you just let him win as I always have people monitoring the fights. If you let him win you get nothing and I’ll ruin your future entirely. Got it?” Pico inspected the money and found that it looked fairly real.

“Yeah, alright, sounds fair enough.” Not really, since he thought the guy was an overprotective loon, but he wasn’t about to argue against a potential employer. “Show me exactly who I’m dealing with, then.” The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a photograph, which was a little weird. I mean, who carries around photos of their daughter’s boyfriend that they want rid of? When Pico took the photo and looked at it though, all annoyance faded and he almost dropped it in surprise. No. That was a face he never thought he would see again. He hardened his expression and anger surged to the surface. Keith, his old best friend and ex-boyfriend who just disappeared one day without so much as a warning. No letter, no text, no call; nothing. He didn’t even break up with him, not really, he just never came back to school and wasn’t at his old house anymore. 

The father, either not caring about his turmoil or not noticing it, continued speaking. “The boy’s name is Keith, but personally I’m sure you don’t really care about that detail, hmm?” Pico looked up, trying to keep the feelings of abandonment from causing him to lash out. 

“Fine, you got a deal. Just tell me where the hell I can find him.” To be honest, Pico wasn’t as interested in the money now as he was more interested in finding Keith and demanding an answer out of him. Why did he leave him? Why did he never tell him why or warn him he was going away? Did he know about Cassandra and the school? Did he know about what Pico suffered through? Did he even care?

The father grinned and handed Pico a sheet of paper. “There you’ll find his current address and the usual hangout for him and my daughter. Pico shrugged off the discomfort at his stalkerish this dude was and took the paper. “If you plan to kill him don’t do it in front of her, just do it at his house. If you plan to battle with him go to the hangout since that’s usually where the battles are.” The man waved him off and started to get back into the limo. “Do try not to disappoint me, won’t you?”

Pico nodded, feeling that his throat was a bit too tight to answer properly. He turned to head home. As he went, he found himself staring at the photo a lot. Keith honestly didn’t look all that much older in the photo. Though, it was what? 8 years? There’s enough differences that it could be passed on as wistful thinking on his part, but the hair and name was a dead giveaway. Seriously, how many cyan haired shorties are there named Keith anyways? Briefly, he wondered if Keith even remembered him. He was so busy wondering about Keith that he didn’t notice the second person in the picture till much later. It was a brown haired girl in a red dress. That must be Cherry, the guy’s daughter.

Something about her irked him, a lot. It wasn’t until he got through the door to his apartment that it dawned on him. Jealousy. He didn’t like how she was hugging Keith or how they both seemed so happy. A brief, horrible feeling crossed him and he had to set the photo and the other sheet of paper down on the counter. It was wrong for him to take it out on her, since she didn’t even know who he was. But, still. Another glance to the photo left him wanting to scratch her face out of the photo. He knew good and well that he couldn’t hurt her without her dad going to murder him, but he made a decision there. The deal was that if Keith couldn’t win all the battles then he had to break up with Cherry, right? Keith would probably hate him for this, but at least he wouldn’t have to put up with Cherry when he went to get his answers.

He picked up the address sheet again and stared at it. Perhaps there was a way to prevent Keith from hating him and to separate the two of them… Like making it seem like a coincidence, so that Keith wouldn’t think it was personal? Yeah, that makes sense. That would definitely be something some rich asshole would do. Hire an old friend to make it harder on you to win, ya? He hardened his resolve and decided that he would just have to try and meet Keith in the morning. Pico didn’t particularly wanna wait, but decided meeting in the dead of the night would only draw suspicions he didn’t want to have to answer to.

He followed his usual routine for sleep, but found that he had more energy than usual. He didn’t even feel remotely tired or sluggish. He figured it was just the potential of seeing Keith and getting the answers he’s wanted for so long. A large part of him hoped that Keith didn’t leave because of him and had a very good reason for not saying anything about it or coming back. He shook it off and got in bed, already preparing for how he wanted to approach Keith the next day to make it seem like they met by chance. It was fine though, he didn’t need to rush the meeting. He had six days to prepare for the battle afterall. 


	2. Day 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pico needed to find Keith and made it look like a coincidence, but what's the best way to go about that exactly? It's not as if he could just waltz up and make a joke about his hair or something.

**Pico’s POV**

For once, he woke up feeling somewhat rested. His inner demons were unusually quiet and his dreams were nonexistent. As he got ready for the day, he made a quick decision that he should only approach if the girlfriend isn’t there. He wasn’t really sure he could keep a friendly façade around her. Once he finished getting ready he headed out the door and made his way down the street. Part of him wanted to immediately approach Keith, but he wasn’t really sure how he would manage to do that casually. Just, ‘wassup, saw your hair and thought it was you? How’s it been since you abandoned me?’ He really didn’t wanna scare Keith off too quickly but he seriously needed answers. He was so distracted trying to think of ways to ‘accidentally’ meet his old friend that he walked straight into someone else that was texting on their phone. He looked up to snarl at them for not watching where they were going when his breath caught in his throat. Surely he wasn’t that lucky. “Keith?”

The cyan haired man looked up in surprise, squinted for half a second, and then his eyes widened. “Pico? Dude, is that you?!” Pico found himself nodding dumbly. “Dude! I never thought I’d see you again!” In typical Keith fashion, Keith tugged Pico straight into a hug. “How you been dude?”

Pico found himself smiling, albeit somewhat hesitantly as he returned the hug before he pulled away to get a good look at Keith. He pretty much dressed exactly like he used to as a kid. “So-so I guess, life goes on I suppose” Ugh, how cliche did he sound? 

Keith nodded. “Yeah, I suppose.” Keith chuckled a bit before quickly glancing down at his phone. “Hey, I got like, half an hour or so until I need to go somewhere. Any chance you got time to hang out and catch up?” If there was a God, he was really trying hard to make it up to Pico.

“Yeah, I got time to kill.” The two of them fell into a short lapse of silence before they both tried to talk at the same time. “So what do you--”

“Do you want to-” They both paused and then chuckled awkwardly. Pico himself picked up the conversation again. “You wanna get some coffee or something? I was about to go fetch some to try and wake up.”

“Sure, sure, sounds nice. I was just going to fetch a movie for later.”

“Oh, anything in mind?” Pico began to lead them towards his favorite coffee place despite it not being his initial goal. Keith quickly fell into step with him.

“Cherry was wanting to check out that old movie,  _ War of the Ancients _ . She mostly just thought the little, fluffy blue alien was cute and wanted to watch it because of that.” Pico congratulated himself on holding back the cringe at hearing her name.

“Cherry?” A small look passed across Keith’s face, but it was gone before he could figure out what it meant. 

“Yeah, she’s my girlfriend. She’s pretty cool.”

“Ah.” what was he supposed to say to that so that it didn’t come off flat? “Your taste in dating partners ever get any better?” He was semi-grateful his voice came off more teasing than anything. 

Keith rolled his eyes, not looking the least bit upset. “‘Scuse you, I have wonderful taste in dating partners.” 

“Say that to her interest in  _ War of Ancients _ just because the MC is a tiny blue alien.”

Keith chuckled. “In slightest defense she mostly wants to watch it because it’s almost the same color as my hair and she wants to poke fun at me. The other part being because she just finds it cute in general.”

Pico found himself shaking his head. “My point still stands. The robots were infinitely cooler than the little fluffy alien dude and a much better reason to be invested in the movie.”

Keith nodded in agreement. “Yeah, the giant robots are pretty cool.” The silence that fell between them wasn’t awkward. It almost felt like old times. Almost. Before the silence could turn into an awkward moment, they arrived at the coffee shop. 

Pico approached the lady at the counter and ordered his usual. “Coffee black with some honey mixed it.”

Keith gave him such an odd look he couldn’t help staring back. “Honey? What kind of mad man puts honey in coffee?”

“Oh ya? And what kind of normal man coffee do you drink?”

“Milk and creamer, like a normal person.”

“Bah, basic bitch coffee.” 

Keith just shook his head and laughed at him. “Sure, sure. I’ll take my ‘basic bitch coffee’ any day of the week.” 

“Least it’s not some kind of Pumpkin Spice Latte or something; I’d have to lose all faith in you if you got that.” 

__ “I’d lose all faith in myself if I got that.” The two chuckled as they paid for their respective drinks and stepped to the side to wait for their drinks to be done. It didn’t take long since their drinks were pretty simple and the two of them chose to sit at a table not far from the door. As nice as this moment was, Pico had a few questions to ask. He didn’t plan to mention the school or Cassandra unless asked, but he wanted to know why Keith left without telling him.

“Can I… ask you something?” Pico was staring down into his coffee as he asked. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to see Keith’s face when he answered.

“Yeah man, is everything okay?” He could hear the worry in Keith’s voice, and that almost made him feel bad for his entire plan.

“I want to know why you moved. Why you didn’t warn me you were moving. That kinda stuff I guess. Did something happen?” The silent ‘did I do something wrong’ lingered at the tip of his tongue, unspoken. 

Keith was quiet for a moment, and the lack of words drew Pico’s eyes up to look at the man across from him. “My parents died. They were on their way back to the airport to pick up my sister when they got killed by a drunk driver. After that, my sister insisted on moving me somewhere that she could visit me more easily. She’s really busy with her job, you know? She figured a bigger city with its own airport would be better for both of us.” That both soothed a lot of hurt in Pico’s chest and caused more.

“I’m sorry, but, why didn’t you tell me?” 

“I wanted to, but my sister didn’t give me time with how quickly she moved us and I was still trying to process everything that was going on, you know?” Keith made a weird gesture with his hands as he tried to gather his words. “Before I could really blink we were states away and I had no way to contact you. We were 12 and you didn’t have a cell phone.” Pico felt a wave of guilt flood him at the sad, guilty look Keith was making. The cyan haired man still could pull off some insanely strong kicked puppy eyes. 

“It’s fine, I just, I really wanted to ask that for such a long time, you know? I don’t take it any bit personal.” Anymore, anyways. 

Keith shook his head. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did. How that must’ve looked to you, you know?” Pico nodded in agreement and the two of them fell into a quiet silence as they sipped at their drinks. It was broken a minute or so later when Keith decided it was his turn to ask a question. “I saw the news... about the school…”

Pico’s heart seized in his chest. “What exactly did they say?”

“They said something about a school shooting and aliens?” That would be a bit complicated to answer, but Pico felt he owed him that much at least since Keith had answered his own question. 

“Oh man, where to begin?” 

“We can always talk about this another time if it’s too much for you right now.” 

“No, I owe you an answer, at least. I guess to begin with our town was a shithole. Not much of a surprise there. The adults thought it was fine but us kids knew.” He made an odd gesture. “I guess we just never knew how bad it really was.” Pico took another sip and then continued. “Cassandra was… well, she was never really normal, she made a big deal about being different from us, right?” Keith nodded, looking confused but not wanting to interrupt. “Well, turns out she was a load different than us. She was an alien. Like, I mean a literal monster from space hellbent on taking over the world kind of alien.” Keith was deathly quiet as he considered what he just learned.

“So she… she killed everyone?”

“Not everyone per say, but, yeah. She killed a lot of people.”

“Even Nene and Darnell--”

“No, they’re fine. I still keep in touch with them.” Keith looked a bit relieved to hear that the other two members of their friend group were alright. “Sometime later I’ll see if they’re fine with me giving you their numbers. I don’t really wanna do that without their permission.”

“No no, I get it, thank you.” Keith genuinely looked so happy just at the chance of seeing more people he used to know that Pico didn’t have the heart to tell Keith just how paranoid the other two had gotten. Or that Pico himself was way different than the Pico that Keith used to know. He was so invested in his mental tangent he almost missed Keith’s phone dinging. “Oh shit--” Pico glanced up to make sure Keith was fine as Keith was hastily getting his stuff together. “I gotta go, I got so into the conversation that I forgot to grab the movie and head back! Cherry’s asking where I’m at. Uh, here!” Keith quickly wrote down his number on a napkin and handed it to Pico. “We’ll talk more okay? I gotta hurry before she gets mad at me. She’s got one hell of a temper sometimes.” Keith chuckled, as if he was privy to an inside joke.

“Alright, be careful Keith, I know how your luck is.”

“What, me? Have bad luck? Never.” Keith sent him a mock salute and practically ran out the door to hurry off and get the movie. Pico considered this an ultimate win, all in all. He got a casual meeting with Keith and got some answers without having to come face to face with the girlfriend. He knew Keith would want to chat more and he figured Keith would have more questions later since their meeting got cut short by Cherry, so he wasn’t worried about this being a one time meeting. Pico added Keith’s contact to his phone and smiled to himself. Talk about a lucky break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm starting to wonder if I should add a language warning, like an official one lmao

**Author's Note:**

> This is a side work for when I'm having writer's block with my other story, so this probably won't get updated often (if the slowness of my other story is any hint to that). Regardless of that, I hope you guys like the story. If you don't, sorry but move on. If I get something inaccurate please gimme a holler so I can correct it, but know I am purposefully tweaking a few details. Oh fair warning, the other story is in no way related to Friday Night Funkin' or Pico's school so if you're only here for those stories I wouldn't worry about the other.


End file.
